Kevin Warren leaves Big Ten to become CEO and Team President of the Chicago Bears: Reaction

Late to the party as always: the Big Ten will be getting a new commissioner, as Kevin Warren has accepted the position of Team President and CEO with the Chicago Bears.

Most of the commentary I’ve seen about Warren departing the Big Ten focuses on the conference achieving a landmark media deal and acquiring USC and UCLA during his tenure, so from that perspective, his commission (regime? reign?) should probably be judged a success.

But my first line of thought with him is always going to be the bumbling way he handled the COVID season.

With roughly six months of lead time, he and his office nonetheless had no plan at all, and it sure looked like he succumbed to pressure from guys like Ryan Day and Scott Frost to change his mind about playing the season at all.

Also, make no mistake about what he’s leaving to do. The Bears are tasking him with finding the best possible stadium deal, which will probably result in them leaving the city of Chicago and extracting a hugely injurious boondoggle from some suburb with a council stupid enough to hand the Bears not just a gigantic bag of money, but probably tax recapture and all that insane shit that should get the people who came up with it arrested.

Warren will probably do a very good job at that, as he did a very good job at it for the Minnesota Vikings before becoming our commissioner. But it’s not a worthy track record for the leader of a conference that likes to pretend it’s all about moral fiber and doing things the right way.

So if only for the sake of preserving the bit, can we find a replacement who doesn’t do shit like that?